For the second time this year I gave up the Monday spot for my I’m Just Sharing blog to my business blog, this time because yesterday was the 48th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and I had something to say. Y’all know how I can be.

GillyBerlin via Compfight

Today I’m starting with a very brief tutorial on how to remove birthdays you didn’t put into your Samsung calendar. Stick with me through this because it might help some of you, and then I’ll have more to say.

1. Open your Calendar app
2. Look for the 3-dot column at the top right and push on it.
3. See Calendars and push on it. When you get the standard Samsung message just push on OK. Another menu might pop up asking you to sign into a Samsung account; just hit the back arrow (the bottom right area of your phone) to make it go away.
4. You’ll probably see everything checked in this column. Look near the bottom and you’ll see Birthdays. Uncheck that and you’re good to go.
5. There are other things there that you might want to uncheck, like Holidays. Before you leave uncheck other stuff you don’t want, and then go ahead and hit the arrow next to Calendars at the top left.

All that junk that was there is now gone; you can jump around as happy as a baby lamb. 🙂

Why was this such a big deal? Two reasons.

The first was because I couldn’t find the information anywhere online. Every suggestion started and ended with changing the Facebook app settings… only I don’t have Facebook on my phone. So it took some digging around for me to discover how to get rid of it.

The second is because I didn’t know hardly any of the people whose names were showing up on my calendar, and wasn’t sure where it was coming from. I know those names had never been there before the latest Galaxy s5 update because it’s the only thing I’ve updated that’s associated with my calendar. The names came from Gmail/Plus, and I haven’t updated either of those on the phone either because I don’t use Gmail and the updates to Plus created other problems a long time ago so I removed all updates and run the older version those few times I post anything there from the phone.

What is it about the people who create technology, paid or free, that has them decide how and when they’re allowed to be so intrusive or obstructive? Whose brilliant idea was it to load all those birthdays on my calendar when I don’t even have my birthday listed on any social media sites? For that matter, whose brilliant idea at Samsung was it to load so many more programs onto my phone that I don’t use and can’t get rid of, to the point that I couldn’t even update apps I wanted to for a while because I kept getting “insufficient space” errors? If y’all know me you know I don’t use tons of apps, so this made no sense.

They’re not alone. For years I’ve talked about the virtues of Tweetdeck, only to have Twitter decide they’re taking the standalone from me in just under 2 weeks. Luckily, I found an alternative called Tweeten:
 

Another app I talked about as kind of a godsend for protecting passwords you wanted to save and take with you was Keeper, which I’m not linking to anymore. One day a couple of weeks ago they sent a message saying they were going to a paid-only model… and that we had 24 hours to decide or lose our passwords. Frankly, that irked me to no end, as I had to grab a pad and write down a bunch of passwords that were only on the phone because they got me into the wi-fi at restaurants. If they had given me a week I might have gone ahead and signed on but that just felt smarmy… so forget them! lol

Then Twitter and Instagram decided to do the Facebook thing (Facebook owns Instagram) and put photos on randomly instead of in date order. Or so they said, because what was left out is if you create your own list of people you want to follow on either of them you still get almost everything in date order; whew! That’s the same with Facebook where, if you add categories for the people you want to follow then you’ll still see those posts based on time. Of course, if you also use F B Purity you can do the same thing; just sayin’…

Here’s my overall gripe. Every time a site changes things up, and every time a company changes some of their technology, AND every time a food company changes the taste of their food (might as well drag them into this), they try to tell us that it’s either new and improved or to give users a better experience… and they know they’re lying. And they think we’re buying it!

I don’t know a single person who said they would never use Tweetdeck if they didn’t take away the standalone version. I’ve never heard a single person say they wouldn’t use Facebook or Instagram if they didn’t start randomizing their feed. I never heard anyone say to Pizza Hut (yeah, calling them out) that if they didn’t change up their wonderful sauce and start using cheaper ingredients and fake beef (you think I’m lying about that one, go to Pizza Hut and ask them what type of beef they’re using… it’ll be called “beef”) they would never eat another pan pizza.

I understand the need to make money. I understand the need to try to save on expenses when you need to. What I don’t understand is why these people outright lie to us and think we’re good with it. This isn’t 1950; we have this thing called the internet (which no one has to capitalize anymore… which I never would anyway…) where not only can we learn about these things, but we’re going to read all the hate from others who beat us to the punch and saved us from a horrible experience.

What do we do, whether we pay for things or not? Well, I’ve moved from Tweetdeck to Tweeten. I set up my groups so I don’t have to deal with randomization. I haven’t been to Pizza Hut in about 10 years or so. It turns out we do have choices; whether we decide to take them is always up to us.

What are you willing to put up with before you try something else?